Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul Read online

  Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul

  Daniel Abraham

  Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul by Daniel Abraham

  As I have grown old, I have watched the world of my youth fade with me. The damage done by the Great War will never be calculated. And yet, even now, I hear from my friends in the circles of power - in truth, most are now the children of my friends - that a third war in Afghanistan is all but certain. Even more than the war on the continent just passed, I find myself in dread of this new conflict and the powers it may provoke.

  And yet, also I feel the nostalgia of old hunts, old games, old enemies now lost to history, and feel again not the rush of conflict but its echo. And recall the unparalleled eyes of a most singular woman I once knew…

  —From the Last Notebooks of Mr. Meriwether, 1919

  CHAPTER ONE: The Two Empresses

  It was the third of December in 188-, and snow swirled down grey and damp upon the cobblestones of London. Meriwether paced before the wide window of the King Street flat impatiently. Balfour sat before the roaring fire, correcting a draft monograph he had written on the subject of Asiatic hand combat as adapted to the English frame.

  “I cannot understand how you can be so devilishly placid,” Meriwether said at last.

  “Practice,” Balfour grunted.

  “Every winter it’s the same,” Meriwether said, gesturing at the falling snow. “The darkness comes earlier, the cold drives men from the roads, and I have this…stirring. This unutterable restlessness. The winter traps me, my friend. It holds me captive.”

  Balfour stroked his wide mustache. His bear-like grunt could have passed for agreement or mere acknowledgment. Meriwether turned away from street and snow, pushing pale hair back from his brow.

  “If only something could break this, this malaise…”

  Balfour glanced up in time to see the figure—slight, clad in dark leather, and swinging from a near-invisible tether—just before it shattered the windows. Shards of glass and wide, wet snowflakes accompanied the figure as it rolled across the carpeted floor. With a shout equal parts alarm and delight, Meriwether dove for his paired service revolvers. Balfour leapt from his chair, drawing blades from the sheaths concealed by his dressing gown’s sleeves, only to find the mouth of a huge handgun pressed firmly to the bridge of his nose. The leather-clad figure met his gaze, brown eyes flecked with gold. Her lips were the soft red of rose petals, and her smile sensual and touched by madness. The scent of clove perfume filled the air like a memory.

  Maria Feodorovna.

  “Czarina,” Meriwether said, pulling back the hammers of his revolvers with an ominous doubled click. “I’ll ask you to stand away from Mr. Balfour, if you please.”

  The Empress Consort of Russia lifted her fine-plucked eyebrows. When she spoke, her voice betrayed nothing of the physical effort she had just expended.

  “My good Mr. Meriwether, I’ll ask you to note that I have already depressed the trigger of my weapon.”

  “Ah,” Meriwether said, sourly. “A dead man’s switch, is it?”

  “Indeed. Fire upon me, and you author your good friend’s death.”

  “Cheap at the price,” Balfour grunted. “Shoot her.”

  Meriwether uncocked his weapons, stepping over the remnants of his windows to lean out, squinting up through the grey snowflakes toward the low, white sky. The Czarina’s weapon didn’t waver.

  “Fastened a silken cord to the roof and then launched yourself out,” he said. “You took something of a risk. London’s architecture is not always so solid as it might seem.”

  “I had to approach you with very little warning,” she said. “Had I simply announced myself, I think my reception might not have been so cordial, yes?”

  “After Cyprus, I think an assumption of violence would have been appropriate,” Meriwether said. “And yet I cannot help notice you haven’t yet killed us, nor we you. It isn’t a turn of events I would have foreseen, and I take it that you have some specific intention in engineering it?”

  “I do,” the Czarina said, “but I would require your word of honor that you would respect our truce.”

  “Truce?” Balfour asked.

  “We face a common enemy,” she said. “Until he is defeated, I suggest we make common cause.”

  Balfour’s face reddened and his bright eyes bulged.

  “I’d sooner make common cause with malaria!”

  The Czarina made a small, disappointed sound with her tongue and teeth.

  “This is where all things end, then,” she said and brought up her free hand to steady the pistol.

  “What manner of common enemy?” Meriwether asked.

  Her smile broadened by a fraction of an inch.

  “Truce?” she asked.

  “Truce,” Meriwether said.

  “Word of honor?”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded to Balfour.

  “Do you agree as well, my old friend?”

  Balfour chuffed under his breath, stepped back, and truculently sheathed his knives. A gust of winter wind brought snow into the room. The fire hissed in complaint.

  “Good enough, then,” the Czarina said, working a small mechanism on her pistol before returning it to the holster at her hip. “Seven weeks ago, my husband was assaulted in his rooms. I was not present at the time, but the woman who impersonates me during my absences reports that immediately before, there was an ectoplasmic darkness that formed in the corners of the room and which no light could dispel, followed by a terrible apparition in the shape of a man with bright red eyes and skin the color of snow. Her memory of the event itself is clouded. We know that my husband survived, that he was for some days afterward quite weak and anemic in appearance. And furthermore… Furthermore, I have reason to believe that his mind is no longer entirely subject to his will.”

  For a moment, snow-muffled hoofbeats and the wet bubbling of the gaslight were the only sounds.

  “Are you saying that the Emperor of Russia has gone mad?” Meriwether asked, leaning against the ruined window frame.

  “Worse,” she said. “He is being compelled by an outside force. A being of spiritual darkness has struck at the heart of my empire. And what researches I have managed tell me that it also has designs upon yours.”

  The interior door burst open, and a harried-looking Mrs. Long stepped in barely ahead of Lord Carmichael.

  “Come quick, boys. The queen’s been attacked!” Lord Carmichael said even before Mrs. Long could announce him. And then, taking in the chaos of glass and ice before him, “What in the world’s going on? And what is she doing here?”

  Meriwether scooped up his signature black greatcoat as Balfour reached for his brace of knives. The Czarina bowed slightly to Lord Carmichael, her disconcerting eyes fixed upon his.

  “She appears to be helping us, unlikely as that seems,” Meriwether said. “Mrs. Long, I apologize again for the inconvenience, but if you could please—”

  “I’ll send a boy to the glazier right away, sir,” Mrs. Long said. “You see Her Majesty’s safely taken care of.”

  “Well, then,” the Czarina said, tucking Meriwether’s arm firmly in her own, “let us hurry to Buckingham Palace.”

  “You knew,” Balfour said. “This isn’t coincidence. You knew the queen was going to be attacked.”

  The Czarina’s mouth formed a distressed moue.

  “Of course I did. And when. But if I had warned you before it happened, you’d have had no reason to help me with my problem,” she said, peevishly. “I came as soon as I could, practically speaking.”

  Balfour and Meriwet
her met each other’s eyes for a moment, a silent communication passing between them.

  “Malaise, eh?” Balfour said, and Meriwether’s laughter surprised and confused all the others in the room.

  The carriage ride through the icy streets was as swift as could be managed. Lord Carmichael’s driver knew all the fastest streets and alleys, and the team of horses was among the best in the empire, but the hand of nature could not be kept back. The falling snow thickened until at the last they seemed to be driving through a dim faerie landscape, only distantly related to the solid, coal-smudged London they knew. Lord Carmichael stared out the window as if his focused will alone could clear their path. By contrast, the Czarina seemed politely amused.

  The guards who greeted the carriage were unfamiliar to Balfour and Meriwether, but it was clear from the alacrity with which they led the unlikely party within that the presence of Lord Carmichael was evidence enough of their status. The Czarina’s outlandish appearance provoked no comment.

  The queen’s private physician was a serious man at the beginning of his third decade. His muttonchop whiskers gave him an air of age and authority undermined by the trembling of his hands and the thinness of his lips. The private sitting room seemed gloomier and colder even than the weather outside, the gold and vermillion of the wallpaper dimmed by soot from the smoking fireplace. Sofas, divans, and small tables covered the floor like travelers huddled together on a train platform. The glowing gas sconces pressed ineffectually at the shadows. No one removed their coats, nor did the servants inquire.

  “She certainly can’t be moved,” the physician said, fumbling with a porcelain pipe. “Not yet. Not for some time, I should think. No, indeed.”

  “Has she regained consciousness then?” Lord Carmichael demanded.

  “Yes, in a sense.”

  “What sense?” Balfour asked.

  The physician blinked, at a loss for word. Meriwether took the man’s pipe from his hand, packing the bowl with fresh tobacco as he spoke.

  “You say she has regained consciousness in a sense. It follows, my good man, that there is also a sense in which she has not. Such comments are certainly evocative, but not in the strictest sense useful. Would you please elaborate as to Her Majesty’s condition?”

  He handed back the pipe. The young physician accepted it.

  “When I was called to her, the queen was quite pale,” he said. “Her pulse rapid, and she complained of dizziness. When she attempted to stand, she fell into a faint. Smelling salts did not revive her. She has since woken, but she seems confused. Keeps talking about someone named Arthur Dodgy.”

  “Artyadaji,” the Czarina said. For the first time, her voice held no mischief.

  “You know the name?” the physician asked.

  “Afghan bogeyman,” Balfour said. “Scares children.”

  “It seems it may do a great deal more than that,” the Czarina said.

  Lord Carmichael hoisted an eyebrow and then, seeing that none of the others shared his amusement at the Czarina’s superstitions, grew somber. Balfour stepped away from the fire, glowering at the walls, his broad nose twitching like a hound’s. Meriwether, noting his companion’s behavior, narrowed his eyes.

  “Was this the room in which the incident occurred?” he asked.

  “It is,” Lord Carmichael said. “Her Majesty had taken a private audience with a member of the diplomatic service about whom, no offense to the Czarina, I cannot speak. She asked to be left alone. A few minutes later, her private guard heard her cry out. He entered the sitting room to find Her Majesty in distress. He described the shadows reaching out from the corners of the room. There was a man as well. Pale-faced and dressed in dark robes.

  “The queen cried out a second time, and the man turned toward the guard. His eyes were bright red, and he spoke in a strange language. A terrible weakness come over the man, but he managed to interpose himself between the attacker and Her Majesty.”

  Meriwether crouched down beside the fireplace. Grey smoke puffed out above him—evidence of a poorly drawing flue—as he ran a long, dainty finger through the fallen ash. Behind him, Balfour pressed a palm to the wallpaper four times in succession, pulling it away slowly.

  “And what became of the dark-robed, red-eyed gentleman?” Meriwether asked without looking up from the flames.

  Lord Carmichael glanced at the Czarina, clearly discomfited by the prospect of speaking candidly in her presence. And then, with a sigh: “Vanished. There one moment, gone the next.”

  “This is the beast that attacked my husband,” the Czarina said. “It is associated with a Mohammadan wizard who travels under the name Abdul Hassan. I have been following him.”

  Meriwether rose from the fire, wiped his hands, and exchanged a meaningful glance with his companion. As if in answer, Balfour raised his palms. Behind him, the door swung open and an eerie figure lurched into the room. Thin white hair rose from the pale scalp like steam. Gnarled hands gripped a rough firewood cudgel. The pale blue eyes starting from the broad, doughy face were empty of all thought. The diaphanous gown gave glimpses of a time-ravaged body, rolls of pale fat draping and shifting with every movement. The voice was low and bestial and filled with a terrible conviction.

  “It cannot be won!” the queen growled, stepping further into the room. “It cannot be won! We will be destroyed!”

  “My queen!” the physician cried. “You ought not be out of bed. You must—”

  “It cannot be won!”

  The firewood cudgel swung through the air with a hiss. The physician fell back, his pipe shattered and blood pouring from his abused lip. Balfour leapt forward, his broad hands clasping the queen’s improvised weapon. A royal ankle took him in the groin, and he fell back as Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India, waved her club in the air with the conviction and ill intent of a Whitechapel brawler. Meriwether and Lord Carmichael only found time to exchange a helpless glance before she turned against them.

  Meriwether blocked the first blow with the blade of his hand, leaping back before the second could do damage to his ribs. Lord Carmichael tried to circle behind her, only to have her whirl upon him, teeth bared and spittle dripping from her lips. She lurched toward him, coming near the open flame as she did. All the men present shared the terrible fear that the Queen’s nightgown might drift into the fire and set the sovereign alight.

  “Stop this childishness at once!”

  The Czarina’s voice was sharp as a slap. Victoria turned toward her, watery blue eyes narrowed and cunning. With a visible effort, the queen found words.

  “Who are you?”

  “An Empress, cousin,” the Czarina said. “Much like yourself.”

  “An Empress,” the queen said as if struggling to recall what the syllables meant. “Like myself.”

  For a moment the fear and violence dimmed in the pale blue eyes. The gaping mouth narrowed to a prim and disapproving scowl. Her spine straightened and she considered the Czarina with a haughty lift of the brow.

  “We do not feel entirely ourself,” Victoria announced and turned her back to the assembled company, pausing only to hand her firewood weapon to Balfour, still red-faced and bent double. The door closed behind her, and for a moment, no one spoke.

  “I should be certain that she…” the physician began, limping after his patient with blood smearing his lip.

  “Is he like this as well?” Meriwether asked, his voice gentle as warm flannel.

  The Czarina sat upon an embroidered chair, her fingers laced together on one leather-clad knee. Her face was a blank. A single tear escaped her left eye, tracking down her cheek.

  “Only sometimes,” she said. “There are whole days when he seems nearly himself. And then it comes again, and…”

  Balfour lifted himself up with a groan and tossed the queen’s improvised cudgel on the fire. Sparks rose like fireflies and died away. He put a wide, comforting hand on the Czarina’s shoulder, and her head sank. For the first time, Meriwether considered that
the adventuress might truly love her husband.

  “Lord Carmichael,” he said, “we are in desperate times. I am very much afraid we shall need to close the ports.”

  “Which port did you have in mind?”

  “All of them,” Meriwether said. “Britain is the heart of the world, but thankfully she is also an island. This wizard must not be permitted to escape, whatever it costs us in trade. We have it in our power to prevent him, and we must employ it. The threat we face is not only to our own Empire, but to the existence of monarchy itself. No price is too high. We will find him.”

  “Unless the bastard can call up a djinni to fly him back to Hell,” Balfour said.

  “Well, yes,” Meriwether agreed. “Unless that.”

  CHAPTER TWO: Players of the Great Game

  “You said that your husband was attacked in his rooms, Czarina,” Meriwether said. “Am I to take it that said rooms were in Moscow?”

  “I don’t believe I was specific,” she said with a smile.

  “No, of course. I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “He was in Kabul.”

  The Czarina’s jewel-bright, jewel-hard eyes glittered in the firelight, but she said nothing.

  With the King Street flat still suffering from the Czarina’s arrival, the three had repaired to the private rooms of the Bastion Club, where Balfour and Meriwether had a history of eccentric guests. The servants had seen them to the leather-upholstered chairs and roaring fire, brought them hot tea, and retreated to genteelly spread the word among the other members that any conversations affecting the Empire’s conflicts with the Czar of the Russias ought to be postponed. It was just that discretion that made the club home to the finest minds of political Europe.

  Lord Carmichael had left immediately to set in motion the great mechanism that was Scotland Yard, armed with the name Abdul Hassan and a few telling details provided by the Czarina: aged appearance, a missing eye tooth, a looping tattoo in Arabic script along his back.